Monday, 30 July 2012

Thing 14: Zotero / Mendeley / CiteULike

When
I wrote my masters dissertation I typed out my bibliography reference
by reference. I worked through the whole text too, slotting in the
references, remembering where I’d referenced the same thing twice – the
whole 15,000 words of it.

I
don’t say this in a “we had it tough back in my day, you lot, you don’t
know you’re born” sort of way. I say it because I didn’t have any
alternative (that I was aware of). It was time consuming and error
prone – who would chose that?There
are so many tools out there these days that there’s no reason for
anyone - student, academic, researcher, would-be librarian – anyone to
have to do that anymore. For
those of us still in the throes of writing essays, or perhaps writing
articles for professional journals, picking one piece of software and
running with it makes life a lot easier. But looking beyond our own
needs to consider the needs of the library users we support, being aware
of a number of different tools is always an advantage (and a big
selling point on a CV). Being able to explore the pros and cons of
different ways of achieving the same goal helps others decide which is
the tool for them.Managing
information in this way, and helping others to do so too demonstrates
our worth in a new way, and is a very useful skill. We’re not just there
to help people find information, we can help them manage it to more
easily achieve their goal. (I’m mostly thinking of these tools in an
academic or research environment, but please give me examples their use
in public libraries, business information centres – anywhere!)

There are 4 essential elements that you need in any reference management system. The ability to:

Thing 14a – Zotero –www.zotero.orgZotero is an open source product that started life as a plug-in for Mozilla Firefox but in its 3.0 version is now available as a standalone which is compatible with Chrome and SafariA useful video which demonstrates Zotero is available from their front page, and rather than re-invent the wheel, I suggest you watch thisZotero is free, but you can get extra storage space and more flexibility for a monthly subscription if you need it.I
think it’s a great, simple to use product which allows easy importing
of references from a lot of sources – check if the ones you use
regularly are covered:http://www.zotero.org/translatorsZotero
also encourages collaboration by providing a social networking element
to their site - you can create groups ( private or public) where you can
share your reference lists - a bit like delicious.

Thing 14b – Mendeley –www.mendeley.comMendeley
is another product which requires a download, but this time it’s a
desktop feature, rather the forcing you to one particular browser. Like
Zotero, there is a free version of Mendeley, but more features and
increased storage are available if you chose to subscribe.There’s some great introductory videos available, plus loads of supporting documentation.

One
of the nicest features, is that if you’re starting off with
a desktop or folder full of PDFs, there is a “watched folder” feature
that you can point Mendeley towards, and it extracts metadata from the
PDF files and populates your Mendeley library automatically. This is
great if you/your library user has a great morass of files they want to
organise retrospectively - and I’ve never seen a room of researchers go
quiet so quickly as when you show them this feature, plus the one that renames the files in a tidy and consistent way (really very impressive!)

There’s
also a PDF editor function within Mendeley, so you can “scribble” on
the full-text articles (though you can get this functionality without by
usingPDF-XChange)Mendeley
has the added bonus that when you synch the web version of Mendeley,
the PDF (if you’ve attached it) will go into the cloud too, so you can
access your full-text articles wherever you are. The
group/social networking function in Mendeley takes things a step
further, by allowing you to set up a closed group where collabators can
share the full-text articles, not just the references.

Mendeley also has a very nice iPad or iPhone app which means you can always keep up with your reading and keep adding to your reference list.

Thing 14c– CiteULikehttp://www.citeulike.org/CiteULike is a likedelicious
but for articles rather than websites. So it’s not strictly comparable
with zotero and mendeley, but still an interesting tool.There’s a nice tour of citeulike by Alan Cann :

It’s a great site for sharing references (very useful for many academics who
work collaboratively). It’s easy to gather references into citeulike
using the browser button (similar to the functionality of delicious) and
there is a massive bonus that you can upload PDFs to attach to the
reference – since there is no desktop element this means you can access
your documents and references from any computer, any time. You can share
your library of references, or keep them private as you see fit.

If
you chose to make your library public, just like delicious, you can see
if anyone else has this paper in their library – ie who is reading what
you’re reading. This might give you clues as to who your competition
is, or who potential collaborators are.But
the big down side (I think) is that there is no cite while you write
functionality – you can export the references in a single bibliography,
in a range of difference referencing styles, but not add references
through a document. (but since I don’t think it’s designed to do this,
so not a fair criticism).

Thing to doFor
this week’s Thing, I’d like you to explore and play with at least one
(or more if you’re feeling enthusiastic and have time) of these tools how could it help you achieve some of your own goals? How could your new
skill help you improve the support you offer your library users?

If
you’re already using one or several of these tools, please share how
you’re using them. If you are running courses, who are they for? What
format do these courses take? Does this service help to change
perceptions of the library service?

4 comments:

Fallen at an early hurdle on this one I'm afraid! Have downloaded the Zotero software and on watching the introductory video on the website, I see a nice little book symbol appears in the URL address bar which you click on in order to download the reference. But when I try to follow suit, there is no book symbol in my URL address bar. Anyone got an idea what's going wrong? I'm off to have a glass of wine and watch dvd in the meantime...Thanks for any help!

Hi Katrina,What are you trying to add? The icon only magically appears in some places I'm afraid. To see how it works when it's possible, try searching for. Book in the Cambridge catalogue, search.lib.cam.ac.uk. I think it also works on Amazon but cn't chek on this machine I'm afraid. Let us know how you get on!

Thanks Niamh. Have opened Cambridge library catalogue in Chrome, found a book. No little book sign in address bar, next step seems to be 'Export format' and the options it gives are, for example, Endnote citation and others.

Ah, I see, I've only used it with the Firefox plugin so am not familiar with how it works with Chrome. Did you download the standalone version and the connector for Chrome? I'll put a call out on Twitter to see if anyone else has been using Zotero with Chrome.